Rotten Fruit of Our Youth

The memory of you exasperates me.
It always arrives uninvited and unannounced
like the news of your death.

After the funeral, I packed the life you knew
into boxes and moved away, just a town over.

When I arrived, the apartment was hot
and smelled of paint and mildew
It struck me then,
it’s never the house that’s haunted
but the people who bring their ghosts

I was still in a black dress when I vowed
never to furnish this place because life is brief,
and I had to be ready to run for it.

I’ve lived four springs in deafening silence.
I can’t unsee death in the blooming daffodils,
and my mattress still sleeps on the floor,

I have to get out of here, someday.
Florida is what’s left of what I’ve lost
and it’s lodged in my throat
like an unresolved heartbreak.
And the thickness of the moisture in the air
might kill me before I get the chance to.

But don’t you worry, I’m going to get better.
I’m going where the air is thin.

I’ll be in New York before the winter arrives,
and I’ll watch snow disappear into the soil
like a lowering casket. And by the end of the winter,
I’ll have found peace in knowing that I’ll never have it.

But for now, I’ll stomach this haunting,
eating it in tiny spoonfuls.

Someday, I’ll use the rotten fruit of our youth
to make jam, or to bake a sweet apple pie.

But for now, I draw the blinds, shut my eyes,
and look forward to a life of arbitrary hope.

By Grecia Espinoza